Your proscriptions against weed are full of your own prejudices and ignorance.

I smoke 3-4 times a day EVERY DAY. I wake up at 6.30am I take pull from my pipe - i got to my 7am strength and conditoining class,then go straight to work, kill it at my 9-5, go home, smoke some more weed, do some light coniditioning, then go to my evening BJJ class (amazing to get you in the flow state when learning, bit of a hinderance when internalising new techniques, i'll give you that lol). Come home, smoke some more, work on my extra-curricular businesses till late into the night. Sleep, repeat the cycle.

Integral part ofthe whole set up. Never slows me down. Fucking enhances me like ANYTHING. Plus i meditate nightly (after evening training, before getting high for the third time/having dinner).

You preach all sorts fad deitary crap from paleo to whatever else, with sketchy scientific evidence at best, and balk at an amazing herb which opens up your capillaries, oxygenate your brain and has plenty of other known benefits. There's a reason why so many MMA (and other) athletes smoke so much weed.

Talking about your prejudices. Saw an eye opening interview with light heavyweight MMA sensation Glover Teixeira recently about his penchant for a glass of red wine after training EVERY SINGLE NIGHT.

(about 13.50mins in)

He talks about extensive sports science research how a small glass of wine at night can be beneficial for athletes with jacked up adrenal systems due to training - helping them relax and sleep deeper post-training.

I don't buy too much into that because even moderate alcohol can increase your estrogen, but hey, estrogen increases serotonin,so that ain't necessarily a bad thing either.

Good for you, but you are the exception to the rule.

Most of my friends who are pot heads are exactly like what Owen described... they are complacent. And they don't do shit, they lead what I would call pathetic lives.

My most intelligent friend spends his life working shitty jobs, running around trying to stay perpetually baked.

Intelligent doesn't mean shit.

I'd much rather have a solid work ethic or master consistency than be "smart".

Again with the wine that's not the typical relationship most people have with alcohol. It's an exception to the rule of what happens to the vast majority of people.

Also paleo = fad ?? lolwut.

Unprocessed foods = how humanity ate food for 99.99999999% of the history of our specie. It's the modern western diet that is messed up and causing new diseases to emerge at alarming rates.

If you think most people handle weed like you do then you're the ignorant one because it's patently obvious what weed does to most people.

Hello.

I did not suggest that most people handle weed like I do. I don't give a fuck about other people. And nor am I trying to tell other people what to do. But I do handle it REALLY well. And at its best its fuckign awesome

weed boosts my work ethic. It helps me train for BJJ tournaments, work a 9-5.3 corporate job and run several internet businesses. It's a painkiller that helps me transition seemlessly from a hard physically demanding environment to a hard thinking environment. The physical thing is key. When you're exausted from training (and 6 days a week, several times a day is a lot) your physically jacked with all the adrenalin, but mentally you're totall numb. Weed helps me use my head again. This is why it's so widespread in MMA. I saw this Dan Hardy interview today where he mentions use of weed in MMA:

About 11 minutes in.

I do my BJJ with a lot of Brazilian guys and its really big among the Brazilian MMA community. They all smoke it before rolling. Here's BJJ fighter/trainer Eddie Bravo talking about weed.

As for the wine. Again, i don't give a fuck if i'm the exception. I'm proud to be the exception .Glover Teixeira is also the exception. And before you start getting hysterical, i didn't actually endorse the use of alcohol considering the estrogen issues.

RE: Paleo - yeah. i'm sick of highly marketed weight loss programs presented as nutrition science. These topics are incredibly complex when we're talking about how nutrition works on a cellular level. I recently came across a "longevity" scientist, Ray Peat, and his research on sugars (such as fructose) :

[i can't post a link because i have less than 30 posts, but go to raypeat[dot]com if you want to know who i'm talking about]

He actually advises drinking lots of orange juice. Which sounds crazy, but when you look at things at the hormonal and cellular level, you're entering a whole different perspective.It's a never ending debte. Get a grip.

I went through a period late in high school/first half of college when I was smoklng 4 times a day. I didn't like it at first, but I was too weak to resist the social pressure--which wasn't active peer pressure, but a way to hang out with friends that were slightly "cooler" than me in my mind. It was a good social facillitator.

Then I realized it was MAKING ME A FUCKING LOSER. I eventually stopped, but it took me six months to kick the habit.

I still think I would have gone to a better college had I not smoked weed--I went to a top 20 school, but I could have gone to a top 5 school if I had had my shit together. My short-term memory is nowhere near where it was. It's way harder for me to get motivated--part of that is the loss of youthful optimism, but I definitely think that dousing my brain with THC multiple times a day had something to do with it as well.

Sort of interesting because I got off on being sort of a drug-addicted fuck-up while still keeping things kind of together. My friends and I had the identity of being the cool stoner-nerds.

I have things together now, sort of. But I could have things COMPLETELY FUCKING TOGETHER--a lot of my friends from high school are making $150k/year at 24 years old working in private equity, whereas I have a menial office job--basically the equivalent of working at McDonald's for someone with my educational background.

Why did this happen? Not because I got poor grades--I did quite well in college. But ITE, that's really the bare minimum if you want to get an interesting job. It might get you an interview, but you need to be OUT THERE FUCKING DOING STUFF THAT WILL GET YOU NOTICED. The only way that's going to happen is if you are seeking stimulation in your own activities and getting off on organizing shit. Instead I was getting off on smoking weed, while rationalizing it like a fifteen year-old: "Durr, my grades are fine."

Like almost every other drug except for maybe caffeine, it's just not fucking worth it--and this is coming from someone with a relatively decent life.

Hey Tyler thanks for great content as usual, you always do a really good job at hammering so many good points it's sometimes hard to know which one to focus on.

I really liked it when you said it was NOT YOUR RESPONSIBILITY to fix the girls issues. I don't know if it was the way I was brought up or whatever but there have been many instances I have been damn pissed off that girls don't choose to go out with me inspite of all my good intentions I have. This has kind of made me a borderline misogynistic person to a certain degree and there is a degree of pleasure that comes with that, but after reading some of the points in your article it makes me wonder if what I'm doing is just trying to impose my "good intentions" on the girl and trying to fix her instead of just relaxing and letting her be her way for bad or for worse.

Mmm, this is a very deep topic for me, I'll think about it a bit more but really, I'm glad you brought it up. Thanks dude!

Ya I've always considered that weed may not be the cause of many smokers apathy towards life, but rather that MOST PEOPLE are apathetic towards life REGARDLESS of whether or not they smoke weed.

There's no question that there's guys out there who are KICKING MY ASS accomplishment wise who smoke a ton of weed.

But ya, I've also seen so many good friends piss their lives away smoking pot. My main pick up mentor -- I remember how vibrant and alive he used to be -- and I remember the night he said "I'm sick of being AFRAID of weed. I'm not going to let it control me, I want to try this." Now he's nowhere to be found, and the few times I've seen him, he's blazed out of his mind and not the same mentally engaged dude.

(Although admittedly he's pretty damned chill, which is a good look for him in a way...)

The main thing for me -- is it a "net positive" for health or a net negative. I know the smoke in the lungs can't be good. I figure the THC in the brain is overall not good, but that's unclear to me (maybe you're just more "chill" so don't learn or focus as much -- but it's not actually bad on the brain -- and maybe some people focus MORE on it). I know the pesticide chemicals like avid to kill the spider mites on the plants are bad, but you could maybe find "organic" weed lol.

I don't like the idea of developing my personality around being high, as I've seen a lot of people do in their pickup with alcohol where they literally require it to play the game (since their sober personality is not well developed or dynamic, they need the alcohol to "access" their pickup personality, which is really really bad.) Or the idea of having to "self medicate" with it -- where you see guys using a bit of cocaine to feel up, then a bit of weed to calm down, etc etc. You ultimately gotta learn how to REGULATE your own emotions.

I'm capable of relaxing myself via meditation and "active meditations" like sex and pickup or sports. I figure the human brain comes equipped with everything it needs from birth to do what it needs to do.

OTOH I know there's benefits to a lot of creative people and even guys in the game. I tend to find I do better than most guys do in game, but I have to work a lot harder than they do -- they get to smoke or have a few drinks and their inhibitions are gone, whereas I have to talk to a bunch of people and do tons of approaches before I become "social" (I'm also an extreme case of a natural introvert).

So I dunno, but ya that's generally my reasoning. I know my life is very SIMPLE by not smoking or drinking. I never have a hangover. I never have a need to go "get drinks" or "get weed". I wake up feeling good every day, etc. A girl I'm dating used to get high all the time til she met me, and her view is "Drugs are great for people who don't have the type of amazing life you have. If I could choose between your life and drugs, I'd choose your life and have no need for drugs. But for most people who don't travel the world and eat in the best restaurants and have all the privileges you have, it's a good consolation prize to have a fun time."

Still I DO enjoy things like reishi tea that relax me, or even bit of caffeinated green tea here and there, or dark chocolate. I figure those are lesser versions, and loaded with healthy nutrients, etc. Maybe weed is another version of that, especially if you used it from a vaporizer and it wasn't loaded with pesticides like most indoor grown pot tends to be.

Overall I'm happy with life as it is now, and maybe will try that stuff when I'm older and already accomplished what I wanted to out of life. I always thought ecstasy (or molly or MDMA or whatever it is) sounded pretty incredible, and something I wanted to try, but again my life is fucking amazing right now and I like the simplicity of just staying sober and enjoying my ridiculous life. I can always do that stuff when I'm older and don't have as many demands or ambitions as I do now.

Tyler

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I smoked weed on a daily basis during my last two years as an undergraduate. I graduated university with decent grades and am heading to professional school in the fall. I only stopped smoking weed incessantly about three months ago. I still light up the occasional joint but only when my friends prompt me to. I don't purchase weed for personal use anymore and have smoked maybe 3 or 4 times since I made the decision to cut back on that sticky icky.

When I was smoking weed everyday I usually did it at night, maybe 30 minutes before I headed to bed. I used it to unwind and to forget about the stresses of daily life. I also made many stoner friends during this time. The thing is, since I went to a good university, almost all of my stoner friends were on top of their shit and didn't just play video games high all day. I think I prided myself on being a functional stoner and I wanted to prove to the world that it was possible to smoke weed and still be successful. I didn't think weed was interfering with my ability to get shit done. But whenever I had some free time I often found myself just lighting it up and watching TV or playing video games. It made me okay with doing basically nothing.

A few months after graduating university I decided to stop. I didn't get the same gratification from being high I used to get. The world seemed a little cloudy/gray while I was high and the morning after. To be honest, weed was making me a bit depressed. I think it was when I realized this that I knew weed was doing me more harm the good.

I guess what I'm trying to say is that weed shouldn't be viewed as something completely negative or positive. It's advantages and drawbacks are very specific to the user and it affects everyone who uses it in slightly different manners.

On a side Tanget about Weed:
Cannabis tends to activate and potentiate whatever behaviors you are currently partaking in. If the dominant culture is to smoke weed and to relax in front of a television thats what your gonna do. If you decide to read books or go out and get novel experiences on it thats what its going to enhance. Its a psychedelic, literally a mind manifester. Its highly demonized because it destroys the work, work, work, work, work, work, work ethic that gets results, but lacks the subtly of the more finely tuned process method. Most people Ive known over the years are of the first camp, but I and several close friends are of the second and can do pretty much anything high, sometimes activities better. I direcly attribute my body control with liquid dancing to THC; the main psychoactive ingredient, due to the large amounts of cannabinoid receptors in the cerebellum, the motor center of the brain. It also explains why many muscians are pot smokers. Great music requires finely tuned movements of small muscles that can be more easily activated with smoking it e.g. better fine motor movement on guitarists. It is also a vasodiolater and helps with relaxation. The paranoid or negative effects stem from that its illegal. Unconciously the person smoking gets scared that they might get caught. Synchronistically enough the body produces anandamide, an endogenous cannabinoid that is activated by exercise and meditation, but has a relatively short half life which is why you can get "high" off these activities. To harken back the always be exercising mentality helps greatly with potentiating the effects of these two activities. All of the aformentioned is only the female of the plant. The male of plant is far more interesting due to the revelations about its ability to form biodegradable plastics stronger than steel.

Interesting post. I'm sure there's massive layers we could go into into how cannabis can positively affect you mentally. I mean, we have SPECIFIC Canabinoid receptors in the brain designe ONLY to be turned on by the consumption of THC which is a chemical ingested from external sources - ie. the body doesn't make this "neuro-transmitter". I'm certain there must be an evolutionary reason it's there - but i don't know much on the science of it.

I only have my personal experience and i know i'm firing off on ALL cylinders while smoking and it totally enhances my productivity in every way with very little negative consequences (touch wood, we can't be certain RE: chemical pesticides as per Tyler's comments etc.) Another one of thoes self-assessed risks. And you certainly shouldn't be talking about MDMA in the same breath as weed, though i get Tyler's overall point about wanting to be "sober/normal" - whatever the fuck that idealised state actually is.

So many notes in there stuck out to me. When I was younger I was a 'natural' I was carefree and didn't care about much, I had my passions such as my band and generally having a good time. Then I began working in the 'real world' and became too serious which led to negative thinking. Lately my carefree side is beginning to come out again :) and you know what it's fun :D

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We were all born into this world, Soceity gives us the 'perception' of what importance/status is. Once you truly realise how absured it all is then the game begins. We are all equal.